Can you make a watch using this equipment?

[Fred]

Hi everyone I saw this lathe online and I'm wondering if it could manufacture a watch from scratch? I'm attaching pictures.

[oldhippy]

It certainly comes with an abundance of attachments. Its down to having the skill to make a watch. I don’t expect you to make a hairspring with that lathe, or a mainspring. I do not see a motor in the photos. I see an indexing plate but do not know what measurements are on it.

I have been very brief on this.  

[Tmuir]

As oldhippy says its a very complete lathe, but that is not all you need.

You would still need a staking tool, jewelling tool and many other small tools and a lot of skill.

[nickelsilver]

You have a milling attachment and a dividing plate, that's the base for making wheels and pinions. Hopefully the dividing plate has divisions that correspond to the parts you want to make. You will need basic (well, advanced) hand and bench tools any pro watchmaker would have. You will have to source cutters for your gear making. It is possible to make them but you would really need more complex equipment like a profile projector to do a decent job. You could layout the holes using the cross slide and milling attachment. Essentially you would have what the fellow at Adventures in Watchmaking blog has and he has gotten quite far in his project. It's taken him years but he's doing it. Some basic CAD software would be really helpful, as well as the Swiss NIHS norms book for designing your gearing.

 

Couple of observations- the cross slide doesn't appear to have a graduated thimble on one axis, and the other (and the one on the milling attachment) are quite small. It appears to be set up "German style", that is, the headstock is to be used on the right. See the cross slide. You can't just flip the top slide around usually. And, on some of these old German machines the slide screws are 0.75mm pitch, so it can get a little nuts keeping track of where you are. AND- they are sometimes left-hand threaded, to the motion to advance is reversed from 99.9% of all other lathes. All that said it is still useful stuff. A friend of mine had an old Lorch with left-handed 0.75mm screws on the slide and he made up large graduated discs with pointers mounted near the cranks to make it a little user friendly. I tried it a couple of times but years of normal-sense screws wouldn't allow my brain to wrap around the reversed-ness.

[jnash]

its more the skill to be fair, ive seen people in the watch world make pieces with make shift tools. that was the mistake a few years ago i made, spent a load of money on tools, but was lacking the skill.

 

However... stunning piece of kit you have there, 

[yankeedog]

 Making all those parts one at a time  with the precision needed to have them work together would be one heck of a feat.Could it be done? of course. Can it be done is the question.

[Pip]

People used to make watches with a lot less a hundred and more years ago! But your question is, “Can you make a watch with this equipment?” and the answer is no, I can’t. But I’d sure have fun trying.


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[nickelsilver]

It certainly comes with an abundance of attachments. Its down to having the skill to make a watch. I don’t expect you to make a hairspring with that lathe, or a mainspring. I do not see a motor in the photos. I see an indexing plate but do not know what measurements are on it.
I have been very brief on this.  

A lot of folks launch off to make aaaalll the bits and never make it far. Even Daniels used existing hairsprings (Hamilton) mainsprings and jewels. He only made jewels when needed.

I think anyone looking to make a watch would do well to make a copy of a 6497, an old one with classic gear profiles. That would be a good learning exercise and expose any method faults before diving in to designing and making the whole thing.

[measuretwice]

I would say yes (with a few other minor bits) and that I'd sure like to try....what a great collection.  Are you a buyer for it?

otoh, I'd say from a standing start, having that kit gives you a minuscule fraction of what's needed to make a watch.  Developing the skills and knowledge of to be proficient at making the wide variety of parts needed, is at least 100x more difficult than acquiring the equipment.   Being able to design and draw it all, 10-100x or more again?  You may have some or all of that, but then I doubt you'd be asking the question.

the good news is, that's where the fun, challenge and reward is:  learning and figuring it out.   With close to 30 years of making things in a home machine shop, I'd say the two polar ends of the continuum, buying the machines and having a finished item (model engines in my case but could be a watch) are almost a let down compared to the long, long bit in between, learning, design, developing craftsmanship etc.

Its the striving that makes such a long venture compelling...vs going out this afternoon and buying a watch.

Edited December 12, 2018 by measuretwice